The City of Ember

For over two hundred years, the underground city of Ember has been the only world its people have ever known — a refuge built by the Builders to shelter humanity until it was safe to return to the surface. But the instructions for finding the way out were lost generations ago, and now Ember's massive generator is failing. The great lamps that hold back the endless dark flicker longer each year, and the storerooms that once overflowed with supplies are running dangerously low.

When twelve-year-old Lina Mayfleet trades job assignments with her friend Doon Harrow, she starts running messages through Ember's dim streets instead of working the pipeworks he was assigned to. At home, she finds a fragment of an old, half-destroyed document tucked away by her family — instructions, it seems, meant for the city's mayor generations ago and lost ever since.

Lina and Doon piece together what remains of the message, certain it holds the secret to Ember's survival. But between a mayor more interested in hoarding supplies than solving the crisis and their own city's crumbling machinery, the two friends must race the dying light to uncover a way out before Ember goes dark for good.